To think a secondary school choir rejecting an 11 year old based on their voice is horrible?

[tigerdrew]

Just had DD come in upset. It's quite random as it's the middle of the night and a weekend and we had a nice day today, told me she is still sad about how she is a bad singer and she doesn't want to see her music teacher as she is too embarrassed etc etc

DD tried out for the school choir which is done by audition so obviously she was aware there was some kind of judging involved and so was I but I do think rejecting a year 7 into something they are interested in trying is harsh, especially when it's hard enough for year 7s.

AIBU to think a school choir should just be for whoever is interested? When kids are all singing in a group they do sound the same anyway! Obviously maybe solos could be kept for the particularly talented but I'm honestly just a bit sad and even annoyed.

At primary school, I was repeatedly rejected from the age of 5 for the school choir. One year I was the only child rejected.

When I was 9, instead of a play at Christmas, they decided to do a Christmas concert. A few rehearsals in, I was dragged out by two teachers and told I was ruining everything (in front of my whole eyar group). They made me sit with the children with Down's syndrome and ting a triangle right in the back instead.

Total shits and really traumatised me.

In high school I was invited to join the choir because I have a nice enough, clear soprano voice. I'm not amazing, but far from terrible.

Still have issues about that whole school experience though.

@beachwhirly and do you sing now?

You’re being unreasonable. Your daughter has to learn that she’s not going to be naturally good at everything and that includes things she enjoys. Secondary is exactly when kids should be starting to learn that.

This will be a great life lesson if you encourage her to take singing lessons and work hard so she can get better at the singing she loves. It will be an awful one if you tell her the choir was unreasonable and that all she has to do to succeed is to turn up.

Well said. That's my experience with drama and theatre too.

What’s the world coming to - next they’ll be rejecting people from the orchestra who can’t play an instrument. Or rejecting people from the football team who can’t even kick a ball. Outrageous <sarcasm>

YABU BTW. This could be a learning opportunity and not always getting what you want and identifying what you ARE good at.

Has your daughter made it to 11yo and high school without learning and coming to terms with the fact she can't be good at everything?

THAT is sad.

Not the poster you're directing this to but, if I wanted, I could go join a community choir tomorrow. I don't want to, so I don't. I wouldn't make it to an auditioned choir though and my instrumental skills have slipped from pre-professional to probably a big mess due to lack of practice, so I know I'd not to up to anything more skill based.

It not the same. Maths and geography are core school subjects. P.E. is also. However, football team and choir are not, are extracurricular activities, and are generally selective if they involve matches/competitions. Some school orchestras are non auditioned, and sound horrendous. Those that require a minimum grade to participate sound good.

Yes, but I do think it's part of a school's remit to provide that access. I think it resources really are so stretched that the choice is between exclusivity and inclusivity, the latter should 'win ' and talents that emerge from that can encouraged to branch out (e.g. form a quartet o or small ensemble in sixth form - also providing leadership experience).

But how is she supposed to get better if the school have just told her 'no'?

@EnidSpyton

Thank you for your insight, and you are very right in everything that you say. I guess I have always been a bit of an idealist 🤣

I won’t pretend to completely understand the struggles of each individual school and music department. It must be unbelievably tough to be a one person department and kudos to all the solitary music teachers out there holding the fort in their schools!

I also have to admit that I don’t know of any schools locally which compete musically, so I wasn’t aware that this was much of a thing. (not that I agree with it…)

Of course funding and resources will always be a problem in schools, particularly in this day and age, and I know that music tends to be the subject that gets dropped first. I understand that for some music departments, where SLT only focus on outcome, having auditioned ‘elite’ ensembles is the only way to showcase that what they are doing is worthwhile.

It’s a volatile world, and it makes me sad for the state of music education.

There have been numerous teacher strikes this year... mainly because the teachers want a bit of respect.
I'm just a parent... but this is part of the problem. Teachers aren't paid to run after school clubs. They do it because they want to. The music department might not have time to run multiple choirs and ensembles. They might not have space in the classroom to have more than 30 kids in the choir.... but the PE department can have 50 kids on the field for football. My DD can't join the choir as she isn't free that day after school.

Ideal world... everyone would be able to join everything they want to. But sometimes we have to live in the real world.

OP if your DD is keen I hope you can find another opportunity for her.

What's the world coming to - next they'll be encouraging kids to learn new things, to explore being part of a musical community, to be given the opportunity to discover where their talents actually lie, but also to learn that you don't always have to be the best at something to find enjoyment in it. And schools might also set kids up for a lifelong love of music and participation. Whatever next?

is this a wind up?

it’s exactly how some of the god-awful folk on reality tv talent shows get through to auditions to be mocked on national tv - no one ever cared enough to explain they weren’t very good.

what age do you think your DD can cope with the very obvious reality that not everyone is good at everything? When she’s been in choir and deluded for several years? When she applies to university?

someone posted the other day asking if perhaps modern parenting was contributing to a lack of resilience and MH issues like anxiety. I’d say situations handled like this do. Your DD clearly feels ‘not good enough’ and you’re reinforcing the drama.

It’s not a big deal to not be good at something . If she like music she can get lessons, if you want her to improve get a voice coach and try for the choir again next year.

Encourage a growth mindset, persistence and resilience rather than dramatising what us quite a small rejection in the grand scheme of things.

No I think YABU. There will usually be a choir in school for everyone and another for people with accurate pitch/appropriate timbre.

You can definitely hear people in choirs if they are singing out of tune, or in a way that doesn't blend with the others.

At my son's school, chamber choir (as it's known) is usually populated by children from higher years and to get in at Y7 is a bit like Ron's Quidditch comment of 'first years never make the House teams!' So I would encourage her to go back each year.

@tigerdrew I am sure you helped DD learn to read and with other school work.
So help her to sing. Listen to her, you sing something and let her sing back.
As long as you don't want to be Top of a Bill somewhere, music is a learnable skill. Singers often develop late when adults.

There’s absolutely nothing stopping the OP from doing that with her daughter except her own mindset which is focussing on fran sting the situation fit maximum ‘hurt’

I actually do take the point of some posters that some choirs are more competitive, taking part in National contests that require excellence. If this was the kind of choir the OPs DD auditioned for I would hope that the school had a less serious choir and that she could join that one.

That's not what resilience is. Resilience is accepting the result, feeling the disappointment, learning from the result, and then moving on. "Moving on" might mean working to improve and then having another go, or it might mean doing something different. The girl is doing nothing wrong by feeling disappointed. The OP is the problem, by trying to dictate how the music department should run their own choir.

Previous posters have said that, ideally, there should be non-auditioned and auditioned choirs. You're right that that's the ideal, but the school might not have the staff for that. It's for the school to prioritise which activities to run and who for. It's easy for parents to make demands on someone else's lunch hour. PPs have made the point that an auditioned group can achieve musical nuance that a non-auditioned group cannot. That nuance is essential to the training of the pupils who are taking or will take GCSE Music. Should the GCSE Music track pupils miss out on that essential training so that the choir can take OP's daughter?

Agree, who's running the choir? At my school it was not part of the curriculum and teachers did it in their spare time. I don't think you can demand teachers do what parents want if they are giving up their free time. Unless it becomes an 'everyone or no-one takes part'?

I would refocus on what you can do to help her solve this if it's important to her. Everybody can learn to sing. Not amazingly but enough to be in a choir. I was also chucked out of school choir, but have had to sit in my son's music lessons. Not only can I now sing, I can now tune a violin by ear. Repetitive practice does something to you. I then joined a choir and enjoyed it for a good while (all depends on the songs they choose).

This is a good life lesson not in being told that you are not good enough, but in being persistent if it matters to you and showing that hard work gets you there. Musical ability can be learnt! The same with sport. Get her lessons and practise with her using online tutorials.

Just out of curiosity what sports do you do as an adult or do you not as you aren’t good at them?

With respect I would actually offer an argument in opposition to what you've just said. I think that the general lack of resilience is because kids aren't being given the opportunity to participate in activities like singing. You don't learn resilience through rejection, you learn it by struggling to learn a difficult song and persisting with it. If you play an instrument for example, you learn resilience from playing boring scales everyday and learning pieces that sound like shit when you start but, with practice, actually start to sound as they should. When kids are rejected from participation they just learn....well, to be rejected. Resilience requires being given the opportunity to persist.

It’s not a big deal to not be good at something . If she like music she can get lessons, if you want her to improve get a voice coach and try for the choir again next year.

And if her parents don't have the money for that?

The misconception of resilience on this thread is really annoying me. Resilience is NOT about not having or showing emotions such as disappointment. It's not a new term for a stiff upper lip. It's not even really about a (urgh) growth mindset. It's about drawing on the internal and external resources we have to manage our life experiences. By talking to her mum about her sadness (and I get how personal it can feel to be told something as inherent to you as your voice is allegedly not up to scratch) OP's dd is drawing on her resources. I'm sure she'll find a way to handle the disappointment in herself.